The Calligra team has announced the first release ever of the Calligra suite. This marks the end of a long development period lasting almost one and a half year. It is the first release in a long series which is planned to make improved applications every 4 months.

Introduction to Calligra

Calligra is an integrated suite of applications that cover office, creative and management needs. It is the most comprehensive free suite of applications anywhere and we expect the number of applications to grow as the project matures. Calligra offers its applications on both desktop computers and mobile platforms like tablets and smartphones.

The desktop version of Calligra is called the Calligra Suite. Version 2.4 of the Calligra Suite contains the following applications:

Office Applications

Calligra Words - Word processor

Calligra Sheets - Spreadsheet

Calligra Stage - Presentation

Calligra Flow - Diagrams and Flowcharts

Kexi - Visual Database Creator

Braindump Note - Mind Mapping

Graphic Applications

Krita - Drawing Application

Karbon - Vector Graphics

Management Applications

Calligra Plan - Project Management

There are also versions for mobile platforms and these have their own user interfaces suited for touch computing. This release contains two such user interfaces:

Calligra Mobile - A version of Calligra for the Nokia N900 smartphone . This version is both a viewer and a document editor. It supports text documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Calligra Active - A more modern user interface for Calligra that is well integrated into the Plasma Active tablet environment. At this time Calligra Active is a viewer only.

New in This Release

We recommend to read the announcement for a full list but the list of improvements is impressive: two new applications, a totally rewritten text layout engine, improved Microsoft filters and a new user interface for tablets and mobile devices.

Calligra is unique among the free application suites in two ways: it is the only one to have a serious offering on mobile and touch based devices. This makes it right from the start an important member of the family of free office suites. It is also unique in that it contains creative applications. No other application suite packages a painting application and a high-level vector drawing application.

We are convinced that Calligra will continue to grow and mature and become a truly outstanding suite.

The site is down for me too, I guess they're having a lot more traffic than usual.

And yes, braindumpnote is exciting - there's still a lot to do in the UI department but the basics are very cool and due to the framework it's build upon it can do a lot already.

The idea of Calligra being 'the webkit of office', which is how the developers describe it, is a very interesting one. It would be interesting to see more third parties attempt to build an custom UI on top of the Calligra core.